Solve Your Organization’s App Gap With Low Code

Chief Innovation Officer Dave Wright explains the high rewards of low-code applications.

CIOs may be overwhelmed by the requests to build solutions in the wake of the pandemic as their organizations adjust to new ways of working. The good news is that powerful low-code platforms make it possible for people to build their own applications—quickly, and without burdening an already over-taxed IT department.

For example, Accelare, a ServiceNow partner, quickly configured an application to assist in the safe reopening of a city’s local restaurants. It enables restaurants to easily apply for a government health inspection, and then they are automatically assigned to a mobile field inspector via a backend workflow. Although originally aimed at restaurants, it’s configurable for a variety of return-to-workplace needs.

Low-code solutions like this are effectively bridging the enterprise “app gap” by allowing non-technical employees—often called citizen developers—to build enterprise-grade applications with minimal programming effort or experience.

Although many clients began using low-code technology as a temporary stopgap during the pandemic, its value is now skyrocketing as an alternative to traditionally slow, costly development processes.

Low code offers the agility needed today; companies are desperate for digital workflow apps to maintain business continuity. But as much as organizations need these digital solutions, they also need them to meet enterprise standards for security and scalability. That’s what sets ServiceNow’s App Engine apart.

The App Engine lets non-expert developers use enterprise-grade, pre-built components to accelerate the programming process—a departure from typical app development that requires hand-coding from scratch. For example, the restaurant application reused common ServiceNow workflows, such as in the customer service management and field service management applications. The team simply reconfigured these existing technology stacks into a novel application.

In addition to speed, the use of pre-built components allows for the existence of a new type of programmer: the citizen developer. What citizen developers lack in programming skills, they make up for in understanding their team’s or customer’s needs.

The end result is impressive resilience and agility—what every CIO needs to deliver today.

This article originally appeared on Workflow, ServiceNow’s online publication that covers the evolving relationship between people and technology at work.